The trend toward portable products suggests conserving power by lowering the operating voltage of the electronic devices. However, the lowered operating voltage poses problems, with particular importance placed on the stability of the memory that may result in device failures as the microprocessor operating voltages are lowered. In order to improve performance some embedded processors may incorporate different voltage domains to allow devices or components to operate at different voltage potentials.
Voltage translator circuits enable designers to implement voltage interfacing between these various voltage domains. The processor core in a notebook computer may separate memories, I/O buffer devices, and arithmetic processing logic into different voltage domains, using translator circuits to expedite translation between the voltage digital interfaces. Thus, the voltage translator circuits are the intermediary circuit formed between low voltage integrated logic circuits and high voltage integrated logic circuits located in the various voltage domains.
Thus, there is a continuing need for better ways to provide flexibility for operating a microprocessor or other digital circuits at desired voltage domains while preserving high bandwidth operation and the stability of any embedded devices.